A FORMER Vice President and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar, today raised concerns over Nigeria’s fuel subsidy payment, promising a review if elected.
Abubakar spoke at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry Economic Forum held in Lagos while discussing his economic plans with the organised private sector.
“One of the key steps my administration will take is to undertake immediate government’s spending that would see to eliminating all leakages emanating from subsidy payments,” he said.
The presidential candidate alleged opacity in Nigeria’s subsidy payments, saying it deprived Nigeria of funds for infrastructure, health and education.
“Nigeria cannot afford to continuously subsidise the lifestyles of its elites, while running a deficit budget,” Abubakar said.
He further stated that he would undertake far-reaching economic restructuring and reforms to improve liquidity in the management of government’s fiscal resources.
The former Vice President’s remark was not unconnected with the huge and disparate figures issued in recent times by key government officials overseeing Nigeria’s petroleum import business on subsidy payments and local fuel consumption, figures that have come under questioning.
The ICIR had reported that the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Hameed Ali, described, in the first week of September, the daily consumption figures given by the NNPCLtd, as “a fraud.”
Ali, during his presentation at the National Assembly on September 1 on the 2023 budget draft, queried what he observed as the discrepancy between the average figure of 98 million litres of petrol per day that the NNPCLtd said was being lifted at the depots and its given daily consumption figure of 60 million litres per day.
“If NNPC Limited claims that it lifts 98 million litres of fuel every day and only 60 million (which is even questionable) is consumed by Nigerians daily, what then happens to the remaining 38 million litres?” the NCS chief wondered.
Harrison Edeh is a journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, always determined to drive advocacy for good governance through holding public officials and businesses accountable.